Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Tomorrow, Aaron and I are off to Tennessee for a much-anticipated five-day vacation to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee! I can’t wait…lots of live music, great food, and a road trip with my hubby. I will miss Gracie so much--five days is the longest that I will have ever been away from her. To help take away the sadness of leaving her for a while, I have made a list of reasons (other than the live music, great food, and the road trip with Aaron) why going to Bonnaroo will be totally awesome:

-Surely Tennessee will be drier than Wisconsin. Over the past few days, we have been slammed by rain and severe weather and flooding. In fact, the flooding is so severe that an entire lake near Wisconsin Dells was overtaken by the flood and some poor homeowners who used to own lakefront property are now the not-so-proud owners of mud hole-front property. Imagine waking up to that. Makes the flooding that we have experienced in our own basement seem like a walk in the park (a wet, musty park, but a park nonetheless).

-Festival atmosphere will be a welcome change from sitting in my bed at night, Googling information on the progesterone-based medication that I am taking (to no avail) to bring on the end of the miscarriage and the beginning of my normal cycles. Still nothing—no sign of anything at all. How is that possible? What is wrong with me?

-My tendency to experience live music-induced euphoria will replace the violent mood swings that I have been plagued with as a result of said progesterone-based medication. Poor Aaron—a special place in heaven surely awaits this man. He has managed to keep a smile on his face even though his wife is up and down and up and down more frequently and less predictably than the price of gas. And I can’t write anything else more about him or I will cry. Again.

(Well, the tears are welling up anyway so I might as well keep going.)

-Time away from home and constant reminders of the miscarriage will hopefully lead to further healing for both myself and for Aaron. I am at the point now where I want to be able to move past this and have a little bit of closure. I know that the pain will never be completely gone, and I still have moments where the sadness is overwhelming, but at least I can see past the grief and I WANT to feel better. A couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even want to feel okay. A little progress is better than none, I suppose, and I think that getting away with Aaron will do wonders for me.

-I’ll be attending my fourth Ben Folds concert. Ooh, I love Ben, almost as much as I love the Decemberists. Ben is my new Dave Matthews, only not quite as hot but with better vocal range.

-Camping! I love camping, and we didn’t get to go at all last summer. I’m very excited about sleeping in a tent and enjoying the outdoors (except if it’s raining—in that case, I am sleeping in the car).